Let the Sunshine In
by Bizzy
Summary: Companion piece to The Flesh Failures. "And yet, he found that he was fully incapable of hating the broken woman that showed up at his post at 0100 hours three and a half weeks ago."


_Let the Sunshine In_

This is a companion piece to _The Flesh Failures_. Note: This makes this piece, by default, a death fic and incredibly dark. Several mature themes are presented in this piece. No, that does not mean sex--I can't outline the themes without ruining the story for you.

You don't need to have read the aforementioned one-shot to understand the basic premise of what is happening here, but this was written as a direct continuation of that piece. I suggest you read it, as it clarifies many small details in this piece.

The title is, again, not mine--in fact, the full title of the song from Hair that I used is _The Flesh Failures/Let the Sunshine In_. I suggest you listen to the song. A title such as _Let the Sunshine In_ might suggest a cheery song, but the tonality and lyrics indicate otherwise.

* * *

Second Lieutenant Havoc was more than prepared to leave the military, abandon the organization that had effectively ruined the lives of nearly everyone involved. He was exhausted of the monotony, tired of the dictatorial ruling, weary of the constant orders coming from voices disembodied from ranks above him. He had stopped listening three weeks ago, and as he walked into Central Headquarters for what he knew would be the last time clutching his formal resignation, he was tempted to spit on the front steps.

Fürher Mustang had been assassinated three and a half weeks ago.

It was ironic. Frankly, he had been wondering when someone would muster the courage to do it. The corruption at that level of power was apparently impossible to avoid, and in his last months of rule Mustang was seen—even by his people—as a tyrant. Conflicts that could have been averted with diplomacy had erupted into violence when Mustang refused to address them. Civilians had been caught in the crossfire, and the people were beginning to riot.

Secretly, Havoc had begun to hate the upper echelons of the military.

He hated Fürher Mustang, for being such a blundering idiot. The man had been a professional politician and an excellent diplomat before his promotions began to increase in frequency. But with the office came power. And with that power came corruption. He knew that diplomacy had not been used because interest groups were rallying for the conflict, for a show of Amestris' power.

One Sergeant Major Fuery had been killed for that show of Amestris' power, and Second Lieutenant Breda might never walk again.

The hallways were quiet as the workday continued. He trudged to human resources, the paper wrinkled in his fist. This military, this façade of appropriate government, did not deserve a formal resignation. He had been tempted to write it on a scrap of notebook paper, just to show them how little propriety the organization deserved.

The young blonde woman at the secretary's desk in the human resources department made him sick to his stomach. Her hair was clipped to her head, as though the woman—hardly more than a child, really—couldn't bear to part with it as per protocol. Her blue uniform indicated that she was a Sergeant Major, and she took the form with a perplexed expression on her face.

"I'm surprised to see you leaving, Lieutenant," she said quietly. "You've been here for a long time." She was rifling through his file with confusion, her bespectacled eyes scanning first his years of service. Her eyes widened slightly, and he instantly knew that she understood why he was resigning. "I will look into your benefits, Lieutenant. We will contact you soon by letter to inform you of what lifetime benefits you will receive for your service."

He nodded absently, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets.

Damn them all. Benefits? He wanted no benefits.

Benefits did not bring back the dead.

Warrant Officer Falman had resigned when Mustang was finally promoted to Fürher. The white-haired man had it right, leaving while he still could. Frankly, Havoc envied the man for his intelligence. Falman almost seemed able to predict the pending disaster, and had fled while he could. The last letter Havoc had received from the man was sent from somewhere out by Western Headquarters, indicating that the man was living a pleasant but quiet life working in a library.

Most importantly, Havoc believed that he had hated General Riza Hawkeye.

That woman had been the last one standing when Mustang made it to the top, and she—for _everything_—looked the part. Time had aged her, but he was certain that it was the stress that aged her more. By the time they had reached top office, there were permanent lines on her face and hints of gray had crept into her hair. He hadn't seen her smile in what felt like years. Instead of joy on her face at the inaugural ceremony for Fürher Mustang, she had stood stiffly at attention, her lips turned slightly downward.

But he found that he was fully incapable of hating the broken woman that showed up at his post at 0100 hours three and a half weeks ago.

Havoc had always thought she was the strong one. Between her and Mustang, he knew that for all his attempts to prove otherwise, Hawkeye was often the backbone of the operation. Her eyes kept people working in the field safe, her skill with her rifle prevented mass casualties, more than even she could probably count. She was the support of every major event in Mustang's career, and the son of a bitch never once gave her credit for it. She stood silently at his back every step of the way, and never once did he even grant her a smile, or praise her for all of her work.

The hardest thing Second Lieutenant Havoc had ever had to do in his life was handcuff General Hawkeye.

She was, of course, a confessed murderer. She had irrefutable evidence in her hands when she showed up at his post. Her black dress had been covered in blood, the murder weapon was holstered at her shoulder, and evidence from the crime scene was gripped tightly in her hands when she showed up at headquarters. Not only was she a _confessed_ murderer, she was one who had turned herself in. Nobody had even known the Fürher was dead when she showed up claiming to be responsible.

Nobody asked any questions, either.

She had one of Mustang's gloves in her hand when she arrived, torn and bloodstained. After being handcuffed, she walked without complaint or struggle to the prison just off of the main campus of Central Headquarters. Without speaking a word to a soul, she sat silently beside Havoc while they waited for the detective. She didn't speak until they were in the detective's office, and the man asked her what happened.

"I killed him."

She had said it so many times, like a broken record, as if it was the only thing she could say.

"I'm a murderer. I killed him."

The detective pressed for details. Havoc unholstered her gun and placed it on the detective's desk, explaining that it was missing a single bullet and that he was fairly certain where that bullet was. Havoc supervised as she was instructed to turn in her dress as evidence. She stood, naked, facing Havoc, her face still covered in tears, as the detective gawked at her back before handing her an old prisoner's uniform and slipping her into it as she was still very much handcuffed. She continued to mumble "I killed him" throughout the process, chest heaving as she cried. In fact, she had nothing to say until the detective pried the scrap of fabric from her hands.

Then, she screamed. She begged, and pleaded, for him to leave it. To let her have it, please. Please, because she needed it. The detective told her that she was suspected for murder, that she had _confessed_ to the murder, that she was as good as convicted as guilty for that murder. He then politely informed her that she was withholding evidence, and that as a prisoner she did not have any rights. Wordlessly, she let him take the glove from her hand.

The three sat in an awkward silence for a good minute and a half before she began to sob. "Why did he do this?"

* * *

Havoc visited her in prison every day, before and after every shift at headquarters. She sat on the cot in her small prison cell and rarely acknowledged his presence. Most of the time, _if_ she noticed that he was there, she would cry. He might tell her a little bit about the case; _they have tons of evidence against you, Hawkeye. I wish you could tell me that you didn't do it_. But she wouldn't admit innocence, and he knew that there was no reason to, because he had every belief that she had been the one to shoot Fürher Mustang in the skull. Riza Hawkeye did not cry and she did not panic. She would not confess to a murder she did not commit. Stress and time had aged her and changed her, but not that much.

One week ago, he had gone to her cell to hear her talking. It was an incredible change of pace. If it hadn't been silent, it had been the same broken phrases, over and over again. The guards told him that she would sit in her cell and repeat that she killed him, over and over, for hours on end. At night, the other prisoners complained that she made too much noise, so much so that the guards had been given permission to gag her overnight.

"You promised me," she was whispering. Apparently, she was engaged in quite the conversation with the floor of her prison cell. "You made _me_ promise." The guard quietly informed Havoc that she had been rambling to inanimate objects in her prison cell for the better part of the last day. "Why…did you do this to me?" Havoc thought he might be sick. Mustang had no explanation, he hadn't in life and he certainly wouldn't two weeks after his funeral, and yet she was trying to find one for him. "You weren't supposed to…"

She had looked up, then, and saw him standing outside of the cell. Her amber eyes locked on his, confusion on her face as she stared. Finally, recognition flitted across her features. "J…Jean?" He nodded at her, standing as close to the bars as he could, watching her carefully. Her gaze flitted jerkily across the small cell, as if she was finally becoming aware of her surroundings. The presence of cognition vanished almost immediately, however. She looked at him, jaw hanging slightly slack as though she were again trying to recall who he was, why he was standing right in front of her with the saddest eyes she might ever have seen.

"Oh…" she whispered, clenching her fists. Her gaze turned back to the floor. "Jean," she whispered, voice cracking. "I killed him."

"I know that," he replied quietly.

"I had to." Her eyes were scanning the floor. Though she was rambling like a madwoman, Havoc had the unpleasant feeling that she was currently more than aware of what she was saying.

Havoc growled low, trying to keep the anger from his voice. "You didn't have to. Nobody forced you."

She hiccupped, and he could see her shoulders shaking as she ducked her head to attempt to hide that she was crying. "No," she whimpered, "I made a promise…I had to."

* * *

That was the last thing she ever said to him.

He came to visit her in prison one day to be told that she had been put in an isolation cell sometime in the middle of the night, nearly thirteen hours ago. They directed him down the dark hall, and he felt his stomach sinking with each step. He knew little about solitary confinement, but he knew that it was hardly good for someone who was already in fragile mental condition. He had kept visiting her, but he never again saw her speak with clarity or awareness. When he came again, she sat and repeated _I killed him_. Three days before he found out that she was moved into isolation, he found out that the guards had been given express permission to gag her as necessary to keep her quiet.

There was no guard at the end of the hall, and he felt his pulse quicken. There was no need to gag a prisoner at the end of a hallway that was so far removed from other prisoners, and yet it was silent. If the guard was correct when he said that she hadn't stopped her quiet litany for five days unless being gagged, Havoc had no reason to believe that she would be quiet now.

The medical examiner identified the time of death as falling somewhere between 0100 and 0200 hours, the night before she was found by Second Lieutenant Havoc. The cause of death was obvious; she had taken her bed sheet and looped it through the bars on the window and then kicked the chair out from beneath her feet, leaving her to hang a solid twelve centimeters from the ground. Her death was ruled a suicide before the medical examiner even arrive to collect the corpse.

* * *

She didn't have a funeral service. Hawkeye was not a religious woman, she never gave any indication that she had a belief in there being a better place after life, and she had no family to attend. Instead, she was buried in a shoddily dug grave at the far corner of a poorly run cemetery. She had posthumously been stripped of her rank and was not permitted to be buried in the state cemetery despite nearly twenty years of dedicated service to her country.

Havoc was the only one to visit her grave, as far as he could tell. He brought his suitcase with him the last time he went, staring angrily at the still freshly-turned soil. Things were not supposed to have ended up like this. No; Fürher Roy Mustang was supposed to be leading his country with pride, diplomacy and kindness. He was not supposed to turn into a corrupted, violent politician. General—no, just Riza Hawkeye—was supposed to support him as his aide and bodyguard. Nobody was supposed to have died. They were supposed to change the country into something _better_.

"I know you said you had no other option," he said quietly. "I believed you when you told me that." He swallowed over the lump in his throat, blinking fast to try and salvage his dignity as he cried over the unmarked grave of a disgraced soldier. "You deserved a hell of a lot better than what you got, Hawkeye." He crouched down and carefully placed a single lily on the fresh soil, smoothing the earth carefully before he stood. When he was back on his feet, he snapped into a final salute—despite what the military said, he knew she deserved that final show of respect.

Ironically, as he turned to leave, the sun began to shine.

* * *

Author's Note, Part 2: This piece has been on my mind for nearly a year, now, since I first put up _The Flesh Failures_. I hope my readers who read that original piece and wondered what happened to lead to those final scenes caught mention of what went wrong in Mustang's career.

I know that some may not agree with what I did to Hawkeye in this piece, but no matter how I considered the outcome of what happened after Mustang's death, I saw no other option. I put myself in her shoes, in a way, and tried to imagine her reaction. I'd be happy to discuss why I made the decision I made via private message, I don't intend to write a novel here.

_Dedicated to Ben K., lost to suicide on April 6, 2009._


End file.
